VANGUARD was essentially the successor magazine to Nationalism Today, being privately produced in support of the National Front (NF) from 1986 to the early 1990s.

It suffered from a number of disadvantages: the internal disruptions and factional infighting for which the NF was notorious had greatly reduced the effectiveness of that party. Although Vanguard successfully supported the winning faction in the NF 'civil war' in 1986, the victory was a Pyrrhic one: the 'winning' remnant of the party was too small to support - in terms of sales - the publications that had supported it, and the controversial nature of the NF meant that publications associated with it found it hard to gain a readership outside party circles.

This was particularly unfortunate since the standard of Vanguard's contents was generally high, and it was often quite prophetic in its forecasts. To take one example: the article 'What comes after the East-West conflict?' questioned what the political consequences would be for white societies if, no longer divided into two, warring, Soviet Communist / American Capitalist blocs, they were faced with the rising threat of militant Islam. This was published almost thirty years ago, before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Overall the magazine attempted to continue the 'radical nationalist' traditions of Nationalism Today, but in a slightly maturer style. It covered a diverse range of cultural, ethnological, philosophical and ecological topics, as well as the obvious socio-economic and political ones. Initially a 16-page monthly, it evolved into a 32-page quarterly by 1990. The April-June 1990 edition was the first ever Nationalist publication in Britain to have a full-colour cover.